no, they aren't. they are barely 30, and always on the best seller 20% off section. realistically, I have never paid over 25 bucks for any new book.

this study completely misses the point, this was a school with a 31 student classroom size, in a area with a decent mean income. Our schools don't have too many troubles teaching our children, and they actually do pretty well compared to other nations if you factor schools with a high rate of poverty. The laptops didn't make a big change because these kids most likely had access to computers already, now they where just in school. Where laptops in schools would be invaluable is for the poorer kids who don't have access to one otherwise.

I think I "discovered" this bacterium years ago, he was named harold and worked right next to me...

it's actually really common for businesses to put unenforceable clauses into their agreements, on the basis that you don't know they can't enforce it, and will therefor quit demanding them to stop screwing you or give you your money back when the clause is pointed out. A more common one is something along the lines of "company x reserves the right to change this agreement when needed." But anytime they change it, the contract is null and void. Try it with your cellphone company sometime, they update their agreement very often, and might claim you can't get out of it for free, but if you keep at them that it isn't the contract you signed, they'll let you out with no termination fee because they have to.

so a pretty small point to nitpick, but Obama's approval rate is 51% by the most recent poll. So clearly the public does seem to be at least one bit happy about it.

If we are taking wealth from other people, why does the top 1% have a larger percentage of the wealth than they used to?

And yet, we aren't taxed enough already. Everyone talks about budget cuts, but simply restoring the taxes on the wealthy to their historical mean would solve our budget problems. So would closing the corporate tax loopholes so that the revenue from corporations goes back to it's historical ~30% instead of it's current 7%. The single greatest expansion in government has been the military, which accounts for a massive amount of our budget, and not a single TEA party politician suggests cutting that.

The TEA party gets made fun of because they are mostly lower class citizens voting to cut taxes on the richest 1% who are already paying some of the lowest taxes in our history, when they even pay them instead of hiring someone to find hole after hole in our tax code.

I suggest you read the papers and letters of your founding fathers.

"I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies. Already they have raised up a monied aristocracy that has set the government at defiance. The issuing power (of money) should be taken away from the banks and restored to the people to whom it properly belongs."
- Thomas Jefferson

That monied aristocracy? That would be the extremely wealthy that you keep trying to make life better for.

Seriously, have you ever used an e-reader? I can read my nook comfortable for as long as i care to read. Several hours at a time. even if you have the lighting for it, it would give me a massive headache to try to do that on a tablet, not even bringing battery life into it. The color ones might die, but honestly, that e-ink screen is just too good. it won't die out until tablets use a screen that is similar, but can also do everything they need to and be touchscreens. so nowhere near the foreseeable future.

I'm not saying a buck is a bad price, I'm just saying I never considered it a concession.

I'm a musician, and though it costs more than $1 to make a song, I also sell it to more than one person. I can keep selling it as long as I keep gigging and keep people interested, and I only paid to record it once.

so it will be a win because the future leaders of america will all have little to no experience with actually living, and where such sociopaths that they decided by about 16 to never have a drink with friends because they wanted to run for public office. Many of our greatest presidents did things in their youth that if well documented and brought up in a campaign in todays political environment would keep them out of office.

Maybe, but Mr. Bucket's 40 coworkers didn't all get a job fixing the machine. Who knows, maybe 9 others also learned how to fix it, but Mr. Bucket was just the one who got the job. what do the other 39 people do? or the 9 people who trained to fix the machine, but learned that the machines take very little fixing, and several people at every toothpaste factory are competing for that job, as well as kids coming out of trade school who are trained on the newest models of toothpaste machine. So now even the forward thinking ones are struggling on all their bills along with their wife and kids because they lost their old jobs, and now have education loans to pay back on top of it with no work.

Also, now the area has become a low income area, and everyone is out of work. The house is worth less than the mortgage now, and the bank is threatening to foreclose, and the local public school is getting worse, forced to have less teachers and more students per class due to lower property taxes. Studies have shown time and again that being from a lower income area greatly hurts students test scores and future performance, so now there is a new generation mired in poverty.

I've seen it happen, i'm from an area that was a booming coal town, and it's had less and less industry and more poverty every year.

you can't stop technology, but to say that you can just focus on less automated tasks and learn to do those is a fallacy. Automation cuts down on the necessary workforce dramatically. End of story. If even a third of the employees being laid off could just find better and more skilled jobs with higher pay, companies wouldn't bother to pay the sink cost to implement the automation.

what about breeding animals selectively? that clearly ends up with far different traits and breeds of dogs. We let them all live, but a chiwawa can breed with a german shepard, they are all dogs. Is it so hard to imagine the enviroment over a long period of time setting up situations where certain traits get more mates, and more kids? what

I've always felt Genghis got a bad rap as a cruel conqueror. Did he commit acts of intense barbarity? Yes. But considering the amount of land slaughtered, the number of people killed by him was surprisingly low, the fear enticed many people to surrender without a fight, and life in the horde was almost always an improvement over the old ways. He was tolerant of any religion, made trade flow, and implemented fair laws. Killing everyone taller than the handle of an ox cart is certainly shocking, but for some reason killing more people in the traditional way, and then oppressing them is merciful and just.

set a group of bounties on a big whiteboard, similar to achievements in games, but more along the lines of "first person to finish their portion of project x" or whatever goals you have, and let them know that they can work late if they choose, but are in no way obligated.

you would be stunned at how much more a competitive group gets done in 8 hrs compared to a group slogging out for 12, and the bounties cost significantly less than paying everyone overtime, just enough to be nice and make them compete.